1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to refrigerated food and drink storage units, and in particular, to compact drawer refrigeration units in which the storage space is defined by one or more pull-out drawers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Refrigerators and freezers for the cold storage of food and beverage items are well known. Many conventional units have one or more doors that are hinged to the front side of the cabinet. Food and beverages are ordinarily stored on shelves in the cabinet and the door(s) as well as in slide-out crisper drawers near the bottom of the cabinet. This is common for industrial and residential refrigerators as either full-size standup units or compact, under-counter units.
Drawer refrigerators are also well known in which the doors are replaced by pull-out drawers having bins in which the food is stored. Drawer refrigerators can be preferred in certain applications, such as low, under-counter applications, because the food items can be pulled out away from surrounding cabinets and accessed more easily. Often such drawer refrigerators have two, or possibly more, pull-out drawers that are arranged side by side or vertically stacked one above the other so that not all of the items are stored in the same drawer.
One problem with drawer refrigerators is that the drawers share a common interior, and thus it is difficult to control the temperature of each drawer, either to set each drawer at the same temperature or to prescribed different temperatures. It is difficult, therefore, to achieve two disparate temperature zones in the same unit, such as would be required for a unit having a freezer drawer and a non-freezer drawer in single cross-ventilated cabinet.
This problem can be avoided largely by isolating each drawer and using two separate evaporator assemblies for each drawer, but at considerable expense. Alternatively, the refrigerator can have a single evaporator, likely at the bottom of the unit, and a dampening system, such as movable louvers. Again, however, this adds considerable expense to the unit as well as occupies additional space in the interior which could otherwise be used for cold storage.
Accordingly, a drawer refrigeration unit is desired that has improved control of the temperature in each zone without requiring each drawer to be completely isolated or independently cooled.